Dirk Bogarde
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Sir Derek Jules Gaspard Ulric Niven van den Bogaerde (28 March, 1921 – 8 May, 1999), better known by his stage name Dirk Bogarde, was an actor and author.
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[edit] Early years
Bogarde was born in West Hampstead, London, of mixed Dutch and Scottish ancestry. His father Ulric van den Bogaerde (born in Perry Barr, Birmingham) was the art editor of The Times and his mother Margaret Niven was a former actress. He joined the army and served in World War II, reaching the rank of Captain. Bogarde served in both the European and Pacific theatres, principally as an intelligence officer. In April 1945 he was one of the first Allied officers to reach the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in Germany, an experience that had the most profound effect on him and about which he found it difficult to speak for several decades afterwards. His horror and revulsion at the cruelty and inhumanity that he witnessed in Belsen left him with a deep-seated hostility towards Germany; he wrote in the 1990s that he would get out of a lift/elevator rather than ride with a German. Ironically, three of his more memorable film roles would be playing a German, one of them as a former SS officer.
[edit] Film career
After the war, Bogarde's good looks helped him begin a career as a film actor, contracted to The Rank Organisation. His 1950 appearance as the criminal, Tom Riley, who shoots Police Constable George Dixon in The Blue Lamp launched him as a lead player, but it was the delightful comedy, Doctor in the House (1954), directed by Ralph Thomas and co-starring Kenneth More, Donald Sinden, and James Robertson Justice as his crabby mentor, that made Bogarde a star.
During the 50s, he also starred as a murderer who befriends a young boy in Hunted (aka The Stranger in Between) (1952); Appointment in London (1953) as a flight officer; The Sea Shall Not Have Them (1954), co-starring Sir Michael Redgrave; The Sleeping Tiger (1954), co-starring Alexis Smith in fine form, and Bogarde's first film for American expatriate director Joseph Losey; Doctor at Sea (1955), co-starring Brigitte Bardot in one of her first film roles; Cast a Dark Shadow (1955), as a man who marries women for money and then kills them; The Spanish Gardner (1956), co-starring Cyril Cusack and Bernard Lee; Doctor at Large (1957), another entry in the "doctor series", co-starring Shirley Eaton; A Tale of Two Cities (1958), a faithfull retelling of Charles Dickens' classic; The Doctor's Dilemma (1959), co-starring Leslie Caron and not a part of the "doctor series"; and Libel (1959), co-starring Olivia de Havilland. Bogarde quickly became a matinee idol and was Britain's number one box office draw of the 1950s, gaining the title of "The Idol of the Odeon."
After 1960, Bogarde abandoned his heart-throb image for more challenging parts, such as barrister Melville Farr in Victim (1961); decadent valet Hugo Barrett in The Servant (1963) (directed by Joseph Losey); television reporter Robert Gold in Darling (1965); Stephen, a bored Oxford University professor, in Accident (1967); German industrialist Frederick Bruckman in Luchino Visconti's The Damned (1969); the ex-Nazi, Max, in the chilling The Night Porter (1974); and, most notably, as Gustav von Aschenbach in Death in Venice (1971) also directed by Luchino Visconti, now probably his best-remembered role.
Other of Bogarde's films during the 60s and 70s were The Angel Wore Red (1960), co-starring Ava Gardner; Song Without End (1960), playing Franz Liszt and directed by George Cukor; The Singer Not the Song (1961), co-starring Sir John Mills; HMS Defiant (British title), also known as Damn the Defiant! (1962), playing sadistic Lieutenant Scott-Padget and co-starring Sir Alec Guinness; I Could Go On Singing (1963), playing David Donne and co-starring Judy Garland in her final screen role; The Mind Benders (1963), an off-beat film about sensory deprivation experiments at Oxford University (precursor to Altered States (1980)) playing Dr Henry Longman; Hot Enough For June, (British title), also known as Agent 8 3/4 (1964), a James Bond-type spy spoof playing bumbling secret agent Nicholas Whistler; King And Country (1964), playing Army lawyer Captain Hargreaves, reluctantly defending deserter Tom Courtenay in a great role; Modesty Blaise (1966), a camp spy send up playing archvillain Gabriel; Our Mother's House (1967), an off-beat film playing good-for-nothing Charlie Hook and directed by Jack Clayton; The Fixer (1968), based on Bernard Malamud's novel playing Bibikov, co-starring Alan Bates; Sebastian (1968), playing brilliant British intelligence code breaker and Oxford professor Mr Sebastian and co-starring Sir John Gielgud, Susannah York, and Lilli Palmer; Oh! What A Lovely War (1969), playing Stephen, co-starring Sir John Gielgud and directed by Sir Richard Attenborough; Justine (1969), playing Pursewarden; Le Serpent (1973), playing Boyle, co-starring Henry Fonda and Yul Brynner; A Bridge Too Far (1977), in a rather controversial performance as Lieutenant General Frederick "Boy" Browning and co-starring Sean Connery, among an all-star cast; Providence (1977), playing Claude Langham and co-starring Sir John Gielgud; Despair (1978), as Hermann Hermann; and Daddy Nostalgie (1991) playing Daddy and co-starring Jane Birkin, Bogarde's final film role.
While a contract performer at the Rank Organisation, Bogarde was considered for a screen version of Lawrence Of Arabia, to be directed by Anthony Asquith. The role of Lawrence eventually went to Peter O'Toole, in a film distributed by Columbia Pictures in 1962 and directed by David Lean. Reportedly, not getting the role of Lawrence of Arabia was Bogarde's greatest screen disappointment. Bogarde was also reportedly considered for the title role in MGM's Doctor Zhivago (1965). While he was working in Darling with Julie Christie, she received the news of her selection as Lara in Zhivago, but not so Bogarde. Years earlier, he had also turned down Louis Jourdan's role as Gaston in MGM's Gigi (1958). Any of these three roles alone would have gained him international recognition, but it was not to be. However, Bogarde was destined to leave his mark in a more intimate, cerebral, and controversial type of cinema legacy.
Bogarde was nominated six times as Best Actor by the British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA), winning twice for The Servant in 1963 and Darling in 1965. He also received the London Film Critics Circle Lifetime Award in 1991.
In all he made 63 films between 1939 and 1991.
[edit] Later career and private life
Image:Dirk Bogarde.jpg A hugely intelligent and cynical man, in 1977 Bogarde embarked on his second career - as an author. Starting with a first volume A Postillion Struck by Lightning, he wrote a series of autobiographical volumes, novels and book reviews. As a writer Bogarde proved to be a witty, elegant, highly literate and thoughtful author, even if some found him to be at times somewhat precious.
Bogarde never married and, even during his lifetime, was reported to be homosexual. For many years he shared a home with his manager Anthony (Tony) Forwood (a former husband of the actress Glynis Johns and the father of her only child, actor Gareth Forwood), but repeatedly denied that their relationship was anything other than friendship.
Although Bogarde has been criticized by some for never publicly "coming out", he starred in the landmark 1961 film Victim as a prominent bisexual barrister in London who fights the blackmailers of a young man with whom he had an emotional relationship, and who commits suicide after being arrested for embezzlement, rather than ruining the attorney's reputation. In the process of exposing the ring of extortionists, Bogarde's character must risk his brilliant legal career and marriage in order to see that justice is served. Victim is reportedly the first mainstream British film to treat homosexuality seriously. This film helped lead to a changing of the law regarding homosexuality in Britain, by Harold Wilson's Labour government in 1967.
As Great Britain's leading box-office star of the 50s, Bogarde displayed enormous personal courage in appearing in such a controversial film as Victim, which could have destroyed his career in 1961. In turn, his performance opened for Bogarde a path to more challenging roles that gained him respect as one of the best actors in the intellectual cinema. Bogarde's decision to appear in Victim appears even more daring today, when many current film stars are afraid to play gay characters because of the perceived public reaction and backlash such a role could bring upon them.
Despite the stereotyping his performance in Victim could have brought him, during his career Bogarde mostly portrayed straight and/or married men in the majority of his sixty plus films, with the exception of his roles in Victim; The Servant; Modesty Blaise; and Death in Venice, and even those roles might be considered by some more bisexual than homosexual in nature.
Bogarde's most serious relationship with a woman was with the French actress Capucine, whom he wanted to marry.
In 1984 Bogarde served as President of the jury at the Cannes Film Festival. This represented an immense honor for Bogarde, and thus became the first Briton ever to serve in that capacity.
Bogarde's controversial film choices later in his career led him to have something of a cult following. The singer Morrissey was a fan, and, according to Charlotte Rampling<ref>Interview, The Culture Show, BBC-2, 17th June 2006</ref>, Bogarde was approached in 1990 by Madonna to appear in her video for Justify My Love, citing The Night Porter as an inspiration. Bogarde turned the offer down.
Dirk Bogarde was knighted in 1992 for his services to acting, and was the recipient of several honorary doctorates, including those from St. Andrews and Sussex universities. Formerly a heavy smoker, Bogarde suffered a minor stroke in November 1987, while Anthony Forwood was dying of liver cancer and Parkinson's disease. Never afraid of voicing his opinion, after witnessing Forwood's protracted death he became active in promoting voluntary euthanasia for terminally ill patients in Britain, and toured the country giving lectures and answering questions from live audiences. It was a cause, he stated, that had been important to him since the war, during which he had witnessed severely injured men pleading to be put out of their misery<ref>Voluntary Euthanasia Society Interview</ref>.
In September 1996 he underwent angioplasty to widen arteries leading to his heart, and suffered a severe pulmonary embolism immediately after the operation. For the final three years of his life Bogarde was paralysed on one side of his body, with his speech affected.
He managed however to complete one final volume of autobiography, dealing with the stroke and its effect on him. He spent some time the day before he died with his good friend Lauren Bacall. Sir Dirk Bogarde died in London from a heart attack on May 8, 1999 at age 78.
His ashes were scattered around his beloved estate of Le Haut Clermont near Grasse, Provence in southern France.
Sir Dirk Bogarde is considered by many as one of Britain's greatest film stars of the 20th century.
[edit] Filmography
[edit] Other works
[edit] Autobiography/memoirs
- A Postillion Struck by Lightning, 1977
- Snakes and Ladders, 1978
- An Orderly Man, 1983
- Backcloth, 1986
- A Particular Friendship, 1989
- Great Meadow, 1992
- A Short Walk from Harrods, 1993
- Cleared for Take-Off, 1995
- For the Time Being: Collected Journalism, 1998
- Dirk Bogarde: The Complete Autobiography
- Dirk Bogarde: The Complete Career Illustrated with Robert Tanitch
[edit] Novels
- A Gentle Occupation, 1980
- Voices in the Garden, 1981
- West of Sunset, 1984
- Jericho, 1991
- A Period of Adjustment, 1994
- Closing Ranks, 1997
[edit] Biography
Dirk Bogarde, Rank Outsider, by Sheridan Morley, appeared in 1996.
Dirk Bogarde's authorised biography, by John Coldstream, appeared in 2004.
[edit] References
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[edit] External links
- Dirk Bogarde at the Internet Movie Database
- Dirk Bogarde at the BFI's Screenonline. Biography and credits
- Dirk Bogarde Fyne Times articlede:Dirk Bogarde
fr:Dirk Bogarde it:Dirk Bogarde lb:Dirk Bogarde ja:ダーク・ボガード no:Dirk Bogarde fi:Dirk Bogarde sv:Dirk Bogarde
